<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Customer service',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/10/21.jpg" alt="Trees in shadow" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I&apos;d found a large, beautiful parrot and was trying to photograph it for my journal.
		It kept dodging out of sight whenever I&apos;d have my camera ready though.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		I woke up to find a bizarre letter in my inbox, carbon copied to my academic advisor:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Dear Alex,
		</p>
		<p>
			We are writing to inform you that you can now pay for your transcript order you have requested.
		</p>
		<p>
			Please log in to your self-service portal and click on the Payments section, where you will find the &quot;Payments Due&quot; option.
		</p>
		<p>
			If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
		</p>
		<p>
			Best regards,<br/>
			Payments Office<br/>
			University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I didn&apos;t order any transcripts.
		My best guess is that my advisor put in this request on my behalf, which is why it&apos;s been carbon copied to them, and that they hadn&apos;t actually listened to my issue.
		So I replied, and carbon copied to the advisor:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Hello payments office,
		</p>
		<p>
			Um.
			I didn&apos;t place a transcript order.
			Unless ... does the transcript order include the sending of my associate degree, et cetera?
			I still need to complete the current term before I will have earned that degree.
			I&apos;m more than happy to pay for that now of course, assuming this transcript request does in fact include the degree itself.
		</p>
		<p>
			Thank you,<br/>
			~ Lexi
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Yeah, it&apos;s definitely easy to lie with statistics.
			All you have to do is find a way to leave out the information that disagrees with what you&apos;re trying to prove.
			Want to show a link between exercise and being overweight?
			Grab your sample from a group of people that are trying to lose a lot of weight.
			They&apos;re engaging in heavy exercise and they&apos;re overweight, so exercise must cause you to pack on the kilograms, right?
		</p>
		<p>
			You make a good point about asking what else the schools had in common.
			Perhaps with that, we can understand the real cause of the rise in test scores, which may or may not be the new program that was implemented.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="health">
	<h2>Health</h2>
	<p>
		My foot still hurts a lot more than it has been hurting lately, but much less than yesterday.
		I can walk normally around the apartment again, no shoes or socks required.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="organisation">
	<h2>Organisation</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve started the process of rearranging my bedroom again.
		In the process, I&apos;m organising paperwork and whatnot that I&apos;ve let pile up.
		I&apos;m thinking my new setup will help me stay on top of things though.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="sales">
	<h2>Sales contest and more</h2>
	<p>
		The head manager started trying to wave my current order price average in front of other employees to stir up some motivation.
		They could wave the prize in front of people or whatever, but dragging me personally into it made me feel really odd.
		But then, Windows freaked out.
		Thanks to corporate&apos;s new demands on us, we&apos;re required to use cash registers that run Windows.
		On top of Windows runs some really buggy cash register software that they no doubt sold to us, which I believe to be the main reason they required us to buy the new registers in the first place.
		So now, whenever the register software or Windows goes down, we&apos;re left high and dry, unable to properly serve customers.
		We engage in cash-only transactions, which we can do by jotting down on paper what we&apos;ve sold so we can ring it in once the system&apos;s back up, but we have absolutely no way to accept credit, debit, or gift cards.
		When this happens, we lose the bulk of our business.
		If I believed in karma, I&apos;d say this was caused by the head manager trying to stir stuff up.
	</p>
	<p>
		I actually didn&apos;t think it was windows messing up at first, but the register software.
		Partly because I thought that if I admitted it was corporate&apos;s software causing this I thought it&apos;d sully the name we work under and partly because I enjoy making Windows look bad, I told any customer that tried to pay with a card that it was a Windows error to blame.
		After probably an hour of dealing with tech support, they located the actual issue though and it <strong>*was*</strong> a Windows error!
		It was a Windows server issue though, not a Windows client issue, so it affected every one of our registers.
		Single points of failure ... isn&apos;t this system corporate made us buy great?
	</p>
	<p>
		The head manager offhandedly mentioned that this downtime was going to greatly boost my order price average.
		All the food that was sold during the downtime would need to be rung into the register once the system was back online, as one huge order.
		I&apos;d thought about this already.
		The smooth salesperson was on the other till, so we&apos;d both get the boost.
		Except ... I can&apos;t keep multi-part orders in my head very well.
		If you give me a long order all at once, I can usually remember it very well.
		If you make me ask you &quot;will that be everything?&quot; repeatedly, I&apos;ll forget most of your order.
		Each segment acts as a separate order in my mind that I must then keep track of.
		The same applies to up-sells.
		If I get you to buy something after you&apos;ve ordered, it&apos;s a second order to my brain, and I can&apos;t remember it all.
		Without the computer to record orders in a mutable state, I couldn&apos;t up-sell and keep track of orders at the same time.
		I tried up-selling to people with particularly short orders whenever there was no line, but had to skip doing that on most people.
		I thought the smooth salesperson would have done better than me, and would be put in an unbeatable state because of tonight.
	</p>
	<p>
		I was never in this to win, so to get rid of the stress, I replied to the head manager that I&apos;d assumed they&apos;d ring in this huge pseudo-order under their own name.
		That would put the smooth salesperson in first place with the head manager following behind.
		I&apos;d drop to third place, which is where I was when all this began.
		The smooth salesperson, who probably deserves the reward most, would win.
		The head manager then admitted that they considered themself to be disqualified from the contest, and said it was a good idea for them to take the credit for that reason.
		But if they don&apos;t count, why did they tell me yesterday that they were in third place?
		Whatever.
		This put me far behind the smooth salesperson, but in second place now.
		However ... I think I saw the head manager ring in the smooth salesperson&apos;s big pseudo-order a bit later though.
		I may have goofed up and cost them the victory they deserve.
		I should have realised that&apos;d happen.
		That said, in the grand scheme of things, they and I would have been unbeatable had we rung in those pseudo-orders.
		They would win, and no other employee would stand a chance.
		This way is more likely to promote the kind of continued sales attempts the head manager is looking for.
		This strategy is better for the head manager.
		I might still need to forfeit in the end though, if the smooth salesperson ends up remaining in second place.
		I&apos;ll still need to think about that though.
		I have no actual evidence that they did better than I, and even if I did, today wasn&apos;t exactly a fair challenge.
		Should it still be held against me?
	</p>
	<p>
		Someone, probably the head manager, left a small poster out on one of the counters, no doubt not sure quite where to hang it.
		It came with a note attached, saying to make sure it was hung where all employees would see and read it, so I took a look.
		The poster told us to go to some website by the twenty-fourth to view a few short videos, so I jotted down the $a[URI] to deal with when I got home.
		In total, the videos are under eight minutes in length.
		They discuss one of the new procedures we&apos;ve got, and talks about how important it is to get it right.
		I won&apos;t go into specifics, as I guess it borders on privileged information.
		I mean, not really, the information&apos;s publicly out there, but I just want to be extra careful not to have legal action taken on me.
		Anyway, the first thing that struck me is that one of the videos claimed that when a customer tries a certain thing when ordering, we should tell them not to do that and do a certain other thing instead.
		That seems rude and condescending.
		If a restaurant treated <strong>*me*</strong> that way, I&apos;d cancel my order and wouldn&apos;t be back for a while, if ever.
		Second, we were told to do X, and it was explained that X is important because Y.
		And I completely agree with the Y that&apos;s given.
		But then, the video continues and says even in cases in which Y doesn&apos;t apply and the customer would have a nicer experience without us doing X, we need to do X anyway.
		No further explanation is given.
		I&apos;ll follow these directions, I suppose.
		I mean, it is my job.
		But I really don&apos;t think our company has our customers&apos; best interests at heart after viewing these videos.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
